Japanese Screens

Through January 3, 2016
Freer Gallery of Art

The nearly two
hundred screens held by the Freer Gallery constitute one of the
most important collections of its type in the world. Ranging in
date from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century,
the screens
represent the major thematic and stylistic examples of this popular
format.

More Japanese Art

Particular strengths of the Freer collection of Japanese screens
include works featuring detailed
representations of daily life,
in forms ranging from visual quotations from classical literature
to
celebratory depictions of bustling urban life of the seventeenth
century. The omnipresent influence of revered
Chinese aesthetic
sensibilities can be seen in an array of ink monochrome landscapes,
as can the
influence of such Japanese artists as the early-seventeenth-century
master Tawaraya Sotatsu (d. 1643), whose importance
Charles Lang
Freer (1854–1919) was the first Western collector to grasp.
Sotatsu's revival of
ancient court styles in a modern mode can
be viewed alongside works by painters who carried on his lineage.

While most screens in the Freer collection are in their original
format, some paintings were
actually created for placement on
sliding door panels. When the panels were destroyed or dismantled,
fragments were salvaged and remounted on folding screens. Colorful
early-seventeenth-century renderings of herons and
pheasants that
were part of a sliding door ensemble created for the Akashi Castle
near Kobe serve as
excellent examples of this restructuring. The
paintings were rescued from a fire that destroyed the castle around
1635.

Modern expectations of traditional Japanese aesthetics are confounded
by an
important pair of six-panel screens by Kano Motonobu (1476–1559)
that display a series of discrete ink monochrome
landscape scenes
set within a lush background of colored landscape and cloud-patterned
gold leaf. This
combination of austerity and flamboyance reveals
a dimension of sixteenth-century Japanese taste that has yet to
be thoroughly explored.

Please note: The Freer Gallery of Art will be closed to the public from January 2016 until summer 2017. The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Library, and Archives will remain open for the duration of the renovation. Learn more »